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Mayday Anti-PAC On Its Second Round of Funding
wonkavader (605434) writes 'Lawrence Lessig's MAYDAY.US Super PAC to end all Super PACs (and more) is now on its second round of funding. The PAC has been reported on here before, but now the numbers are bigger. They hit their $1 million first goal easily, but now they aim to get another $5 million in the same time period. Lessig says that he's arranged for matching, again. It seems like the goals will be even higher in 2016: "For 2014, our goal is to raise $12 million and use it to make fundamental reform the key issue in five congressional races. And we'll apply what we learn then to 2016."'
I've always been curious if it was possible for our system to eventually work itself out without the need for a bloody revolution. There has been so much malinvestment lately at the hands of entrenched political groups. I would be thrilled to see the US fix itself through its own system. My pessimism says otherwise though, but who knows.
From what I understand, their goal as a SuperPAC is to pour money into congressional races to help reform candidates win, with the ultimate goal of having them pass campaign finance laws that limit the influence of SuperPACs. They're essentially working against themselves, but that's the entire point - if SuperPACs are done away with, they'll have done their job.
Took me a few minutes to find out what they support, http://reform.to/#/reforms.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
So, do you really believe you get a good system of government when the more money you have the more access you have to political speech?
Or do you end up with a system which is heavily skewed to the wishes of a handful of wealthy people -- which is pretty much what you have now.
If rich people can pay lots of money to convince government to lower their taxes while cutting services for everybody else ... well, sooner or later, that 'everybody else' might decide they've had enough and do something about it.
And that didn't work out so well for Marie Antoinette and others who felt they should be entitled to cal the shots.
Unless you have lots of money, in which case you're more equal, and the governed be damned because you can make what you want happens. So, we're back to "four legs good, two legs better".
And then the governed decide that they're tired of putting up with your shit.
If you're going to build your society around what the wealthy can afford to buy in terms of political action, you will end up with an inherently unjust society.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
How does an anti-pac work? Do they pay the TV stations not to run the ads from the other super-pacs?
They will have a hit list. If you don't support reform, they will fund your opponent. This is how Super Pacs work, they use their money to influence small changes in policy on the part of candidates. Like reform... it's an easy thing to support with very little opposition. The candidate doesn't even have to make a big deal out of it. He just changes some wording on his website and viola, he doesn't have to worry about this PAC giving his opponent money. His opponents thinking the same thing so now BOTH sides of race are pro-reform.
They will likely do well at first. But when an actual reform bill comes up, the Eye of Sauron will be on them. When this comes up for a vote every other Super Pac in the country will realize their power is being challenged and the full weight of the political establishment will turn on them. They will face literally billions of dollars of opposition. I really doubt their ability to fundraise that kind of cash.
Really? You're going to end the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics by out-fundraising them?
Having money is the one thing corporations are good at, and they're really, really good at it. If your strategy hinges on using money as influence, you're always going to lose, because they are FAR better and more practiced at that game than you are.
The only way to advance this particular agenda is to exploit the strengths that we have which corporations don't. We can fill the streets with real people, we can make disruptive spectacles and speak earnestly about social problems. Unlike corporations, we don't need to hide behind spokespeople and PACs, because we have authenticity. We are genuinely concerned about the future of our democracy, and though corporations can try hard to simulate that concern, it's never as authentic as the real thing.
The MAYDAY PAC is like David trying to beat Goliath in a fist fight. Don't fight on his terms, use the sling, idiot!
From what I understand, their goal as a SuperPAC is to pour money into congressional races to help reform candidates win, with the ultimate goal of having them pass campaign finance laws that limit the influence of SuperPACs.
So, the winning move for any candidate is to support reform until elected and then make a reversal and enjoy the windfall from the status quo. How are they going to prevent that?
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No, limiting spending inherently prevents the wealthy from dominating the discourse in a way that the non-wealthy simply cannot.
It says the more money you have, the more say you get. That's feudalism. Which is pretty much the opposite of the principles on which the US was founded.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Naturally he means it's totally unfair that a union, with hundreds of thousands of members, can tell all those members that they think it would be really great to donate to party X.
And then all those members can go and donate up to the individual maximum, and tend to do so because they actually like their union.
And it's totally unfair that the CEO of the company they all work for, can't use the profits of their labor, to unilaterally decide to give an unlimited amount of money from the company's coffers to the opposing party, and call it a business expense, that also just so happens to align to his personal interests as well.
I mean, how is that democracy? When the masses of people can popularly choose to support a politician and not be completely overridden by individual capital interests?
All you can do is fight over *who* gets to wield it. At least now, bad as it is, I get to contribute to groups that represent my views, even if imperfectly. Seriously, with all the abuses of other moneyed interests,(mine, of course never abuse the system) no one has ever even tried to explain something better to me.
Just some adolescent rant about "getting the money out of politics".
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
Do they have any legal recourse against candidates who are elected with their funding, only to split from them after the election?
So, instead of the tyranny of the masses, you're advocating the tyranny of the wealthy?
Because that works out so much better.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
MAYDAY (one word) is also widely known as a distress call.
The elephant in the room is that the money in politics really isn't campaign money.
The reason so much is being spent on campaigns now days is because so much is being spent by government.
There is an immense amount of power involved in generating TRILLIONS of dollars in tax revenue and borrowing BILLIONS more and then determining what that should be spent on.
That power is desired mightily, which is what is driving the campaign spending.
Think of it this way. Every member in congress is voting on bills to spend ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more money each year than they have control over in their campaign funds.
The campaign funds are just the ante to get in the game of playing with the much bigger piles of money.
The Anti-Corruption Act would go a long way towards helping. Lobbying is the major way that corporations influence legislation, and it needs to be completely stopped. It needs to be criminalized.
they must include implementing term limits on congress
I completely agree, that is long overdue. We have people currently in Congress who have been there for 40 or 50 years and have become millionaires because of it. That is not public service, that is a career. That needs to end also, there needs to be a strict limit of years of service covering both branches of Congress. If you've served 20 years in Congress, you are not eligible to get elected again. All the way back to the beginning, George Washington refused to run for a third term. A few others ran, but no one succeeded until FDR. After his death, the 22nd Amendment made the 2 term limit permanent instead of tradition. Term limits for Congress are long, long overdue.
The difficult thing about implementing any of this, whether it is banning lobbying or establishing term limits or banning corporate donations or whatever needs to happen in order to help, is that we are relying on Congress to limit themselves. Since the obvious goal for many of them is to remain in power, that's clearly an uphill battle.
I'm not waiting for a perfect solution. The Mayday PAC is a good start and I want to (and have) shown support. If it fails, and someone else decides to step up and take the leadership role, I'll support them too. If you're going to sit there and wait for a perfect solution then, well, you'll die before that happens. Many, many people want to see change, what we need is a good leader.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I've seen inklings of a smear campaign against this movement already, trying to exploit the same stupid red meat issues (abortion, gun control, taxes) to alienate potential supporters that would otherwise emphatically agree that corporations are not people and should no longer control our government.
I do wish them luck. They're gonna need it.
The name of the PAC is May Day, which is a pro union and pro leftist holiday. It is a prominent holiday in many socialist countries. I am not sure why that is a good pick for a supposed non-partisan PAC with a mission to end PAC money.
Really? You're not sure? You don't understand that mayday is an international distress call? The registered name of the organization is "Mayday PAC", not "May Day PAC". In some places it is stylized as "MAYDAY PAC". There is never a space after "May" as you wrote.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Bingo. If there are millions of dollars in subsidies at stake or a multi-million dollar firm, paying a bunch of lawyers to take a bunch of lawyer-politicians to dinner and on vacations.
Force Congress to work securely from their respective state houses (make the lobbyists travel if they want to influence) and simplify the tax code (a recommendation of the President's Simpson-Bowles commission which only the GOP has embraced) and you'll go a long way to limit influence.
The opposite of progress is congress
According to the CBO: "A corporation may write its check to the Internal Revenue Service for payment of the corporate income tax, but that money must come from somewhere: from reduced returns to investors in the company, lower wages to its workers, or higher prices that consumers pay for the products the company produces."
Corporate income taxes account for about $250-$200B in annual revenue. Compliance costs for business to determine how much tax they owe is also estimated at about $200-$300B annually. In other words, it costs corporations almost as much or maybe slightly more to determine how much they owe as they actually owe. Not to mention the inordinate amount of effort that goes into determining how to run the business when various tax considerations come into play (e.g. when to buy equipment, or hiring that 50th employee) instead of simply doing what's best for the business for business reasons rather than tax reasons. And virtually all of these taxes and compliance costs get passed on directly to consumers/labor/shareholders.
A huge amount of "corporate welfare" comes in the form of special tax breaks--eliminate the tax breaks and you eliminate the corporate welfare and the tens of millions of dollars of lobbyist money showered on politicians as they try to seek those special tax breaks.
Apart from the economic shot in the arm freeing up about $600B every year in the economy would be--and the increase tax revenues resulting from growth--the "cost" is largely recaptured as the dollars flow into personal income taxes (wages, dividends). Further, with the specter of double taxation removed, we could reset the CG rates to normal income rates.
The point relative the size of government here is that you take away a huge incentive for corporations to lobby for special tax treatment. That money flows out of the political system. Sure, corporations may find other things to lobby for, but special tax treatment seems to be #1 on the hit parade.
P.S. This will never happen because too many people think we need to punish corporations with taxes.